Interactivity

It wasn’t so long, in a world of static media, that interactive was an exciting buzz word. By now, interactive is an everyday casual term. We have come to expect interactive media or we may even not pay attention to it. For example, this eBook is interactive in that we can jump between topics using links, even if we don’t think about that as an exceptional example of interactivity. Producing media with more engaging interactive elements has become remarkably easy. The trap, then, is that interactivity also risks being poorly used as a communication tool.

Here, we use the description of making something interactive as a dynamic contrast to a static product. Instead of simply consuming, we interact with a communication product. But the same contrast also applies to didactic discourse — instead of being lectured to, the audience is part of the discussion. It is not to say that dynamic interactions

to to refer to Interactive can be

Interactive Communication Products
As opposed to static products. The consumer has a role in composing the outcome.
Interactive Communication Experiences
As opposed to didatic experiences. The receiver has a role in delivery of material. An engaging experience.

Interactivity seems to at once both fantastic and dismal at the same time. Let’s consider what I mean by that.

In this section we’ll restrict out discussion to interactive communication products, considering a variety of digital forms, but also analog.

What are different types of interactivity

We can interact with an image, in our case typically a data visualization, directly, what I’ll refer to as direct interactions, or we can interact with a user interface (UI) which instigates some behind the scene change.

Both forms of interactivity are available in popular languages for scientific computing (Python, R, Julia, JavaScript) and have in the past fews years become increasingly easier to implement. There are however some major consequwnces

Interactive Plots and Interfaces

We’ll consider three steps in integrating interactivity. Our focus is on using it as a tool for communication, how exactly it is implemented will be discussed elsewhere add link to next section

  1. Why do we need to introduce interactivity into a communication pipeline?
  2. What exactly will we use? Which
  3. How will we implement it and how will we maintain it?